New Grads Moving Back Home, plus Updates and Favorites

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Below I’ll share some updates and favorites for the week, but first I’ll touch on the topic of new college grads living at home with family.

Living at Home

I was involved in a brief conversation recently with someone who was a few years out of college and paying rent in an apartment. This situation sounded familiar, as it’s exactly what I did upon graduation.

The guy I was speaking with commented on how he had a friend who didn’t get a job for a year after graduation, but is probably not worse off financially since he was living at home with his parents (the friend, that is). The guy was just smirking and shaking his head. I asked him if he could ever do that, and he told me that it wouldn’t be possible right now since his parents live on the east coast, but if he could do it over again he’d have to think about it.

To me, the idea of living at home with parents was a foreign concept when I graduated undergrad. Basically, I was conditioned to think that the “normal” thing to do was to go out on your own once you reached a certain age. Anything else was “odd”, in my view at the time.

These days, I look at it completely differently. While many people simply do not have the option to do so, many people do have an opportunity to live with parents after graduation. If I had to do it again, I would have done this for a few years, no doubt.

Sure, it would have inhibited some personal growth. However, I might have made a few other decisions better during that time with the steadying influence at home, and I could have saved a fair amount of money.

Now, I wouldn’t have been charged rent or utilities. Sure, I would have paid for my own food, insurance, car, etc – but I’d have a roof over my head at no cost, which would allow me to save and get a stronger financial foothold. That would have been a good idea.

What do you think? Is the idea of a college grad living at home to save money sensible to you, or negative since money isn’t everything and perhaps independence/growth is?

Budgeting in the Fun Stuff shared Net Worth – Do You Include the House?

Consumerism Commentary shared Should Couples Get a Prenup?

Hope to Prosper shared The Four Seasons of Personal Finance, and 4 Important Lessons on Investing(note: rare to include 2 articles from one blog, but I enjoyed both of these. Hope to Prosper doesn’t publish often, but when he does, the articles are quite good)

Comments

I was raised in a different era and have a stubborn independent streak in me. I would be homeless before living at home. Not that I don’t love my parents or enjoyed the time I was there. I am just that hard headed.

I spent one year at home attending the local junior college. I moved out when I was 19 and transfered to a better school. My Mom would have allowed me to live at home throughout college and I did pay rent. But, moving out was very good for me in many ways. The freedom and experiences were invaluable. Moving to the beach during college was awesome.

One of the big problems with kids who stay at home or return home, is that they get used to being subsidized, instead of becoming independent. And, this rarely translates into savings for them. They just end up spending all of their money on wants, instead of needs. And, most of them stay in debt, even though they have low expenses.

My son moved out at 18 and returned at 19. He is 22 now. When he came back home, he told me that he was trying to “save money”. I told him that he was just taking the money out of my pocket and putting it into his. To see the look on his face, I could tell he had never thought of that. He honestly thought it was free for him to live at home, but he eats half of the food in the house. He now pays rent and I love having him around. But, he hasn’t taken advantage of my generosity to put himself ahead financially. I think he is typical of a lot of kids his age. They don’t seem to have the drive and ambition we had in our generation.

I moved home about a year after college to save. It worked great. My wife to be did the same thing. In 18 months we had saved enough for a house, and now we’re gone for good. My parents viewed it as helping us buy our house without really coughing up cash (but they really did my subsidizing our living situation and not making us pay rent).

After we got married, we’d planned on staying at my parents for a few weeks after the honeymoon because we were completely broke but starting graduate school (and getting stipends) shortly thereafter. My parents suggested that was not a good idea and lent us money for a rental deposit so we could move directly to the grad school city, even though it was way more expensive.

Come to think of it, when we first visited DH’s family right after the honeymoon, they wouldn’t let us stay in their spare bedroom and paid for us to stay at a hotel instead. Maybe there’s just something icky about the idea of newlyweds in a bedroom nearby.

I know several mature adults who have decided to live with their parents at times when all of their lives were in flux. Two (working) single adults I knew bought homes with their mothers when their (working) mothers got divorced. They shared the mortgage, property tax and upkeep costs, and worked out how to share the expenses and work. In one case, the mother did the cooking for both of them, while the “child” did all the cleaning, by mutual agreement. In one case, the house was split into two separate flats; in the other, it was not. I have seen it is possible for two (or more) generations to live together. I think that is very grown up!

Wealth-Building Financial Lessons

Disclaimer

We are well meaning folks that are not investment professionals or financial advisors. Please feel free to have fun here, and take this information in the spirit of entertainment, as it is not financial or legal advice, For that, seek an appropriate professional. Your actual financial decisions are your own responsibility. Thank you.